The tawdry female bosses are tiresome, and we could do with more male fanservice.

[Melichoir]

I wouldn't call it sophistry as I've no intention of misleading anyone,...male sexualization is sparse in mainstream.

Oh I dont mean you yourself are using sophistry. I meant that gamasutra's snippet there is sophistry. But we disagree here I believe. I think the argument put forward by gamasutra is predicated on making assumptions about the intent of people as a collective based on identity factors. It surmises, based on the snippet, that why something happened is cause of the identity of a group of people, and does not address individual factors.

Now, I want to say first and foremost that designers are creatives by nature. ..., but would be just if not more, risky.

I agree with this broadly. And thats a nuance that the article snippet glosses over - that while theyre creatives, theyre also part of a marketing machine and will create and react to predicted market forces. This is a factor separate of identity. Lets say you are a restaurant owner in some small midwest town. You are hyper competent in french cuisine and love to make it. However, the people in your town arent very open to french cuisine - its to different from the things they themselves like. They like good ol fashioned BBQ. So you have two choices: Try to push the french cuisine and hope the market is open enough to it, or put out food that you know your customers will come in for. The true mid ground would be to slowly insert french delicacies and what not that slowly shifts the palette of your customers to be more open to something else. You obviously wont reach everyone, and some people would be put off, but you can nudge the market in tiny increments.

And thats the point - if society at large has an issue with homosexuality, and youre a game company, how likely is it that you would introduce more neutral or pro LBGT characters into your media without suffering push back when your concern is profit? But the article snippet makes the inverse argument - the identity of a group of people pushed this forward with no consideration to the market, which was a neutral indifferent aspect.

Identity is important...I'm not saying it's 100 % unattainable, just hard to mass market towards and audience in which you have no perspective in.

The problem is the assumptions it must make for it to work: That collective identity informs decision making processes, and the ability to understand and empathize, particularly if you have personal experiences in it is not present. It is not a functional point to suggest that a straight man cannot understand what a gay man feels or goes through. You could maybe argue a straight man may not understand what it is to be specifically attracted to another man, possibly, but it is very obvious a straight man understands the concept of attraction. The differences isnt attraction, its just in the details of the attraction.

As a point, of those devs that gamasutra points to, how many of them may have gay friends or family members whom they love dearly? How many of them are activists promoting equal rights? How many of them maybe even experimented with their sexuality? The article cant know, but decides to push that their broad over arching identity - not individual life experiences and thoughts - drive the decision making processes. To collectivize them all under the same umbrella of 'x' group has 'y' characteristic, and therefore does things in 'z' fashion.

So when I see articles make assertions by turning identity groups into monoliths and giving that as an explanation, while ignoring nuance among other factors, it comes across as sophistry. Sounds legit, sounds reasonable on paper....if you accept the initial premise they put forth.

It's for this reason that we see more creativity and boundary pushing in steam indie developers than would dare present in mainstream.....We'd be redeveloping FFXIV into Sims 5 Deluxe.

Well itd be nice if there was something for everyone, but I do understand the practical nature of things to in regards to marketing. Maybe Im not being clear enough or not thinking it through well enough, but my thoughts simply was that yeah theres gonna probably more fan service geared somewhat at what is the perceived 'largest' group of the fanbase (not necessarily a majority). However, I think if there is a large enough section of the community wants a certain kind of fan service, even if theyre not the majority, they should be accommodating for it. Which is why Im saying lets just do fanservice for everyone as much as possible within reason. Fanservice for guys and gals of varying stripes as much as possible. Everyone wins. But lets also be blunt about it and just accept we all want to be seeing things that makes our hearts a flutter and not have a double standard. Thus far, if the issue is we dont have many sexy guys, then lets incorporate more to help level the field.

The article says the identity of game developers ...how the decision process is affected.

The problem is that this rejects the agency of the individual. It is very convenient an argument to use things like 'subconscious', because it allows you to collectivize rather than address nuance. Are we going to suggest that LGBT are unable to write straight characters because of their identity and collective subconsciousness? Or Female writers write male characters, or vice versa. How about when it comes to race. I feel that the identity argument, again, uses collectivization to make broad generalized sweeping judgement about group. It presupposes that the thinking and actions of an individual person is predicated on group identity, whether consciously or subconsciously.

I understand where you're going, but the scope of this article and my argument is not as abstract as your reply is. Its singular purpose is to reason why male sexualisation is not as prevalent as female sexualisation i relation to the majority target audience. It's unfortunate but I really have no opinion on this part.

And it comes to it's conclusion based on identity rather than the nuance of the individual, particularly when trying to understand a trend. The through process is this: A trend is noticed, trend is based on decisions being made, whos making the decisions - the creatives, notices creatives share similar identity, assumes then that identity must be informing the creative process, which explains trend.

The best way to explain why this process is faulty is as so (Please keep in mind I do not endorse this outlook: ) 'X' Societies are relatively successful, Theyre successful based on decisions they make, we look at the people who make up 'X' society, they all are of the same racial identity 'y', identity must be informing decision process, therefore these societies are successful because of 'y' people.


This is the basis of many supremacist talking points, and you can clearly see why its faulty. The explanation for an identified trend is being derived from the identity of that people associated with the trend, rather than other aspects. It removes nuance. You can flip this into a negative pretty easily as well, where x society is unsuccessful and comprised of 'y' people, and the underlying philosophy of tying identity to action and outcome operates similarly. To me, this is not a legitimate point.

The logic doesn't quite add up here..... In the US, it's probably Captain America's butt.

I bring up 80s/90s because Im trying (and probably failing but the sounds of it) to show you a then vs now trend. And that trend has been drifting more and more towards a wider variety of representation and acceptance. Let me put it this way - By 1940s standards, the 1980s shirtless action man glistening in sweat would never fly. It would be considered way to homo erotic by 1940s standards. Much like the more form fitting outfits of lady leads that show more female figure is way to sexual by, lets say, 1750s standards. The 80s, when comparing it to previous eras, is far more progressive but in compared to our current environment, seems brutish and primitive. We have been, broadly moving more liberally as time goes on for all groups. Something that gets glossed over often when discussing where we are now vs where we were.

Why it relates here is that I am making saying that that the concepts that Gamasutra, if we accept their premise makes more contextual sense 30 years ago than it does now. It comes across like they still feel that between 30-40 years ago and now, almost nothing at all has changed.

No offence taken....Not just me.

Unfortunately, I just disagree with this outlook. I dont think Identity is an important part of who a person is. Identity, as I define it, is merely the descriptive characteristics of a person at best. Being black, white, hispanic, asian, etc does not inform me of anything other than what you may look like. Generally, It would be, in my personal opinion, wrong to assume anything about an individual person simply based on the identity of race as an example. Same with Sex, Sexuality, Gender expression, etc. outside of direct explicit factors. (I.E: If somone tells me theyre a lesbian, I can make the assumption they broadly find women attractive because the identity specifies a very direct action and concept). People come from many walks of life, and I think that a pernicious idea that is constantly floated unfortunately is to conflate our identity with our individualistic thinking and experiences and project outwards. I.E: "As an 'x' person, I had this life experiences, so anyone with 'x' trait inevitably has the same experiences because we share 'x' trait." Taken it the extremes (which happens a lot lately IMO), it creates us vs them dichotomies where "You cannot understand anything about me cause youre 'y' and Im 'x'"

The reality is more that life experiences define a lot more about us than the make up of our skin and body features. Of course we are not blank slates, as there are still under some evolutionary factors at play that do influence our actions to some extent in a broad sense. But we are not genetically predetermined to act in very nuanced hyper specific ways. From my perspective, the Gamasutra article is actually suggesting this - The identity of the creatives relates to a specific world view, action, and outcome that ends up reinforcing the identity aspect. It is to simplistic and brushes over way to many factors, especially when the goal is trying to understand a trend. If anything, its implicitly assigning motive to a person based on identity grouping.

I know people do put their identity into their viewpoints, but it makes me wonder if that happens cause we've been trained too or because it actually matters. I tend to suspect the former, particularly as of late, where the cultural zeitgeist in the US currently for the last 5-10 years has become more and more hyper focused on identity as a means of defining who we are.

That being said, I rather generalize myself to....It's the context it becomes used in and the purpose it serves.

It would be silly of course to not realize that some factors influence certain actions. A heterosexual man is going to be inclined to find women generally desirable. So when theyre looking for a partner, its gonna probably be more geared towards women. There's biology at play there. A direct one to one action that is immediately related. However, its one thing to say we may have preferences, and another to suggest that having a sexual preference influences a creative or somewhat unrelated action. To create female characters while down playing male sexuality (subconsciously or otherwise) specifically cause theyre mostly all heterosexual is applying an identity to a very specific and semi unrelated action. In this case - Identity to creative process. A specific action derived from a broad generalization of a group along one factor.

That being stated, it wouldnt surprise me if cultural norms and traditions affect your outlook. But I do think its important to make a distinction between racial and cultural. It's a point a lot of people dont think about to much but Culture =/= race. It is one thing to say you are French (culture) and racially french. A person of Chinese racial background who is born in France is French culturally, not 'French' by race. This is because the culture of something is about ideas, philosophies, and concepts. About what people believe and act out. Where French as an ethnic group is just a relation of the ancestry and characteristics of a person. This gets conflated because people tend to confuse the fact an idea exists or comes from a specific part of the world, that it must have only come into existence because of the 'race' of the people inhabiting that area.

I make this distinction because a lot of people fail to realize theres a difference. I think it makes perfect sense that cultural cues affect your outlook because those are ideas and concepts, but I wouldn't suggest your racial make up itself does because these are two separate things, if that makes sense.

Im glad we tend to agree (I think unless Im misreading you) that lets just have more fan service for everyone and call it a day. Im definitely of the concept of more is better, not less.

Beyond all this, I think I need to stop writing books here. haha...